SPOILER Alert

I lost Milan in Blood on the Altar. He is removed from my deck, bringing it below its required deck size.

If I replace him with 0xp cards, do I still pay the 1xp to replace?

Was wondering/hoping that this could be treated similarly to the situation with exile, but I think the clear rule here is that I do have to pay xp to replace the cards lost.

I believe it was ruled somewhere that if the loss of a card reduces your deck to below the 30 required cards, then you are allowed to add level 0 cards to bring you back up to 30 cards without spending any XP. (Too lazy to hunt down the ruling - I forget if it was in the context of specifically this question (for allies) or for cards that were exiled.)

Yep, if your deck is below the correct amount, you can refill it with 0-level cards for free, no XP cost required. The concept is part of the official rules for the Exile mechanic.

From the "Exile" rules in the Dunwich Legacy Campaign guide:
"If exiling 1 or more cards would reduce your deck below your investigator’s deck size, when purchasing cards between scenarios, you must purchase cards so that a legal deck size is maintained (when purchasing cards in this manner, you may purchase level 0 cards for 0 experience cost until a legal deck size is reached)."

I haven't seen anything that would indicate the rules would work differently in this situation. If anyone has other info, it would be nice to hear.

Just went over to Boardgamegeek and checked the discussions over there and one person claimed that official word from Matthew Newman(the designer) is that you treat the situation just like "Exiled" cards.

I think I realized the reason for this.

Imagine you have 0 xp going into Blood on the Altar and you play both Leo and Milan---2 copies of each. If both got kidnapped and you lost the scenario, you would end up with just 2 xp for the scenario but your deck would be down to 26 normal player cards [the 30 you had going into the scenario minus 2 copies of Milan minus 2 copies of Leo].

If you had to follow the normal rules for adding 0xp cards back into your deck, you would be unable to get back to the required deck size.

If someone has the ruling from Matt (I've definitely seen it somewhere too) I'll add it to the arkhamdb FAQ for kidnapped...

I can't copypaste on my phone for some reason but it's in #encounter-spoilers from BD Flory on Apr 17, 3:19 p.m.

Thanks @Network57

Weird, I wasn't sure why I woildn't have forwarded this ruling, I can't find it in my emails either. But yes, that was the ruling I got. Treat sacrificed allies as exiled for replacing them in your deck, xp cost-wise.